Broken Journey
by Bottlebrush
Summary: When Sirius Black came back to Britain at the beginning of Goblet of Fire, he stopped off at Remus Lupin's on his way to Hogwarts. Sirius's pov. Slash SBRL.


Title: Broken Journey

Rating: K+

Disclaimer: I don't own the Harry Potter world or its characters. J. K. Rowling does.

Summary: When Sirius Black came back to Britain at the beginning of _Goblet of Fire_, he stopped briefly at Remus Lupin's on his way to Hogwarts. SBRL slash. Sirius's pov.

I left Buckbeak in the forest and continued on foot. There was no need to tie him up and, being wandless, I could not constrain him by magic. We understood each other now; without words I communicated to him that he should remain in the forest and I would return to him the next day. He indicated his willingness to comply, and I went on my way, following the owl that flew from tree to tree always a little ahead of me. At the edge of the forest I transformed into my dog shape, for security. I had found that for long-distance travelling, man shape was better. I could run faster as a dog, but I seemed to have more stamina as a man. However, disguise was necessary now that I was entering the farmlands of human habitation.

I lost sight of the owl; with no convenient trees to alight in, he flew over the fields faster than I could follow, but I continued plodding through the late summer rain in as straight a line as the fences and hedges allowed, and found him perched on a gate post a few miles further on. Again he flew ahead, and I followed as best I could, this continuing for, it seemed to me, some hours until at last I spied him on the corrugated metal roof of a ramshackle hut. Seeing me approach, he hooted softly once and flew away.

This, then, was my destination. That was fortunate, for I could have gone no further that day; it was all I could do to limp to the door and wait there, scratching and whining, until it opened.

Remus stood over me, the surprise on his face turning almost instantly to recognition. "Sirius!" he said. "Why don't you……oh, you can't, you're exhausted. Come in."

A quick spell, and there was a cheerful blaze in the hut's fireplace. He brought a blanket and spread it in front of the hearth. I collapsed on to it, grateful for the fire which warmed my sodden fur. He placed a dish in front of me, and the smell of it reminded me how long it had been since I had eaten. There was some kind of stewed meat, and potatoes, and it tasted wonderful after the rats and dustbin scraps I had been living on since my return to Britain.

He brought hot water in a basin, washed my paws, and put a healing ointment on the pads, then he rubbed my back and head with a towel until I was dry and comfortable enough to fall into a half-doze.

"Can't you transform yet? Never mind," he said, sitting on the blanket beside me with his hand on my neck. A knock on the door got him up, and I turned to look anxiously at the man standing there.

"Good afternoon, Mr Mattock," Remus said politely.

"Hi there, Lupin," the man answered. "We 'ad a bit o' dinner left over, and the missus thought yer might like it."

Remus was looking at the dish in the man's hands.

"Course, if yer don' want it, I'll give it to pigs," the man went on.

"I want it," Remus said quickly, taking the dish.

"Didn't know yer got a dog," said the man, looking over Remus's shoulder at me.

"I'm just looking after him for a while," Remus answered.

"Thass awright, Lupin, I don' mind yer 'avin' a dog," the man said, "long as yer keep 'im away from my chickens."

"I'll be sure to do that, Mr Mattock," Remus said gravely, and my heart leapt as a memory rushed back into the empty spaces the Dementors had gouged out of my brain. Schoolboy Remus, using just that voice to lull suspicions from the minds of professors and prefects; a voice as blandly innocent as his face, concealing who knew what mischief. Only one other person now living could have detected the laughter beneath the earnest surface of his words. I heard it with joy and relief. Whatever had happened in the last thirteen years, whoever he was now, some part of him was still Moony.

Mattock, the Muggle, turned from the door and went his way, and Remus carried the dish to a square wooden table against the far wall.

"Hallo, Moony," I said, standing behind him in human form.

He turned quickly. "Sirius," he said, simply.

"Yes. Nice place you've got here. Not," I said, looking around.

"It's adequate. I don't intend it to be permanent," he said.

But I was looking at a metal cage in the corner of the hut. It was barely big enough for a man to squeeze into, and there was a padlock on the door. "Is that where you –"

"Yes. I used my salary from Hogwarts to have it made."

"But it's much too small. You must be horribly cramped. And I don't see how……"

"It's quite simple. I get in before I change, lock the padlock, put my hand out through the bars and hang the key on that hook. Then I can't get at the key again until I have my fingers back. Lucky I don't transform into a monkey. Although that would be easier in some ways, the anatomy being less dissimilar."

He sounded faintly amused, but I was still gazing in horror at the cage, thinking of the wolf, remembering the strength and energy of the animal that had run through the Forest with me long ago. Confined in that space, it must come near to destroying itself. "Don't you have the Wolfbane potion?" I asked.

"Not since I left Hogwarts," he said.

"And you have no one to help you, no one to take care of you afterwards."

"Doesn't matter. I'm used to it."

"The farmer – Mattock –"

"Oh yes, he's seen the cage. He said nothing. I _hope_ my Imperturbability Charms hold out long enough, but if he does hear things, he doesn't say anything about that either. He's rather – strange."

He indicated I should sit at the table, and placed the dish in front of me. "Can you eat some more of that stuff?"

I was still very hungry, but I suggested we should share the food.

He refused, saying he had eaten, and brought a piece of bread for himself. I didn't argue. The food was the same as before, stewed meat with mashed potatoes on top.

"Mrs Mattock is a nice woman," Remus said, "but her cooking is disgusting."

"Tastes all right to me," I said.

"School of Hagrid," he said.

I laughed then, remembering how awful Hagrid's cooking was and how we had always had to eat some of it, because we liked him and he liked us.

"How is Hagrid?" I asked.

"Flourishing. He's a teacher now, you know? Care of Magical Creatures."

"That would suit him. But how……? Wasn't he expelled in fourth year?"

"Third. Turns out he didn't do what he got expelled for. Harry cleared him, year before last."

"_Harry_ did?"

"It was before I started teaching there, and I don't know all the details, but Dumbledore said Harry and his friends uncovered the whole mystery, something to do with old Salazar's Chamber of Secrets."

"Harry's turned out all right," I said, the words sounding absurd, but I had spent most of the past thirteen years thinking otherwise.

"Yes. James would be proud of him," Remus said.

"I'm on my way to Hogwarts," I said. "Something's going on there and I don't like the sound of it. But I had to drop in here first. I needed to see you and talk to you, without Peter and Snape and all those children around."

"How did you know where to find me?"

"Dumbledore. Sent me an owl."

"I'm glad you're here."

"It's……I hardly know where to begin. But when I saw you in the Shack, I remembered……I thought I remembered……we were close once, weren't we?"

"You could say that," he said, smiling.

"I mean, really close."

"We loved each other," he said.

"Yes, yes we did. I knew it, only……and I thought, if there was any chance for us……oh, I know there isn't, all those years, you've moved on……"

"I'd say there must be. There is. I never really stopped loving you."

"Even when you believed……"

"Even so."

"That's not what they told me in Azkaban. They told me you had never loved me, you only pretended to, and my love for you was worthless, something dirty and shameful and ludicrous."

"That's just Dementorspeak. There's no truth in it."

"Ah yes, Dementors. Know what else they told me?" _Don't do this,_ I told myself,_ he doesn't deserve this, he can't take it, it'll ruin everything._ But I couldn't stop myself. I was pushing, pushing, testing to destruction. "They told me that if it were you in Azkaban, and I on the outside, I would stop at nothing until I got you out."

He became very still, his face pale and stricken. My heart ached for him.

"I'm sorry," he said.

And suddenly the compulsion to push him to the limit left me. "Sorry for what?" I asked. "For not raising an army of giants to batter down the walls of Azkaban?"

"Yes," he said. "And because I fear there _is_ no hope for us, if you feel like that."

"But I don't," I said. "Oh, love, I am so sorry, I was trying to teach you what Dementorspeak is _really_ like, how they distort every thought in one's head, if you haven't experienced it you can't know – I didn't mean it, not a word of it, I know there was nothing you could have done. I don't know why I said it. Yes I do, it's the shadow of Azkaban that is still on me, and perhaps it will never leave me, but please forgive me." I stopped babbling and rested my head in my hands.

"Nevertheless, it is true," he said quietly. "I abandoned you to that place. I tried to see the Minister, and he wouldn't even speak to me. I tried to visit you, and they wouldn't let me. I tried to get you a proper trial, and nobody would listen. I couldn't think what else to do. I have no excuse. I can't even say I honestly believed you guilty. I could believe you capable of destroying the world, if you had reason enough, but not James. Never James. I didn't know what to believe. And I let you go into Hell alone. I can't make it up to you, but I would spend my life trying. If you can accept that, then we have a chance. But I can't undo what I did."

"That's all I want," I said. "A chance. Something to build on."

"The past can't be mended," he said. "But if we can leave it behind, we may have a future."

A future. When I first escaped, I hadn't thought much about the future, beyond killing the rat. And then, after all that happened and all that was said in the Shrieking Shack, I had begun to see the possibility of rebuilding a relationship with Harry, once he knew the truth about his parents and me. Now I had another glimmer of light; this good kind man who still had within him a trace of the mischievous schoolboy from twenty years ago, and who was sitting across the table from me with an earnest hopeful look, wanted to have a future with me. Suddenly, life was very much worth living.

"Yes," I said. "We'll leave it behind, along with all the other lies they told me. They lied about Harry too." I paused. Remus said nothing, but looked at me intently.

"That was something else they took from me. They said Harry was an evil twisted child who had made friends with Malfoy's boy, and together they had gone over to the Dark side," I told him.

"None of that is true."

"I know. Deep inside, I've always known it, but the Dementors – they poison everything, everything good is taken away or twisted somehow. But from the minute I saw him in that alley near his home, looking so like James, I knew he was all right. And he's got good friends."

"Yes, he has."

"That boy, the one whose leg I broke – he's a Weasley, isn't he? One of Molly and Arthur's?"

"Yes, their sixth."

"He must have been just a baby when……And the girl – Hermione?"

"Yes, Harry's other best friend. She's quite exceptional. She's going to be a brilliant witch. If she survives."

"Oh, I think if any of us survive, Hermione will. I won't forget that kick in a hurry."

"Kick?"

"You don't want to know."

"She reminds me of myself at that age. But she's a much stronger person than me."

"She doesn't have your disadvantages."

"She's Muggleborn. I'd say that was a disadvantage."

_Muggleborn_. I was suddenly hit by a memory so painful I couldn't speak.

"You're thinking about Lily, aren't you?" Remus said gently.

"_She_ was Muggleborn," I said. "She would have been a brilliant witch. And she didn't survive."

"I know. But……the only thing we can do for her now is look after her son. When are you leaving for Hogsmeade?"

"Tomorrow. I've still got the hippogriff, he's waiting back in the forest."

"Then you should get some sleep now. We can talk more in the morning."

There was no question of where either of us would sleep. There was one bed, and no seats except two hard kitchen chairs. I lay on the narrow bed, facing the fireplace, covered by Remus's one blanket and his cloak. Remus was behind me, one arm laid across my body.

"I want……more than anything in the world right now, I want to love you," I told him. "But I can't. Azkaban – the Dementors – still with me……"

"Dear Sirius," he said gently. "This _is_ love." And he kissed the back of my neck, very softly. "Sleep now. You're safe here. Nothing can get in."

I knew it. The hut, flimsy and ill-constructed though it was, would be well warded. No Auror, Dementor nor Death Eater could approach without our knowing it. I was shielded by Remus's magic, of which his arm thrown protectively over me was only a symbol. And for the first time in years I felt warm and comfortable; the fire burning low in front of me, the gentle warmth of Remus's body behind me, the food I had eaten, all combined to give me a sense of well-being, as if a lump of ice that had been lodged within me were melting.

When I awoke there was sunlight in the room, from the open door. I turned and finding myself alone in the bed I sat up, panic-stricken. Then I heard him singing, and another memory slotted into place. He used to do that, sing quietly to himself when he was feeling happy.

"_Even as a bird out of the fowler's snare_

_Escapes away, so is our soul set free……_"

One of his damned Presbyterian hymns. For one who claimed to have no religious affiliations, Remus knew the Church of Scotland hymn-book cover to cover, paraphrases and all. "I like the _tunes_," he used to say.

He was standing in the doorway.

"Where have you been?" I asked, regretting but unable to prevent the accusation in my voice.

"Marauding," he said, smiling. "I got eggs and mushrooms. We'll have omelettes for breakfast, cooked by me, not Mrs Mattock."

The omelettes were delicious and I ate three. There was some hard, heavy bread to go with them.

"Mrs Mattock is one of the few women left who still bakes her own bread. Unfortunately," he explained.

He made the last omelette into a sandwich with some of the bread, and put it in a transparent bag. Then he levitated an oval metal bath filled with water into the room, placing it in front of the fireplace and using his wand to heat the water.

"Clothes off, and into the bath," he ordered.

Enjoying the luxury of a hot bath, which I had not experienced in nearly thirteen years, I remembered I had once been rather fastidious about personal cleanliness. I used to shower at least once a day, before Azkaban.

Remus had taken my disgusting rags away and come back with some Muggle clothes.

"These should fit you well enough," he said. "They'll be short in the arms and legs, but not enough to matter. I'm afraid there's nothing to do with this but get rid of it."

He was referring to my filthy matted hair which he held in one hand.

"Never mind, it'll grow back," he said as he cut it all off. "It'll grow back all shiny and beautiful, like it was before."

I felt oddly embarrassed by this, and looked away.

He laughed gently. "In the meantime, you look perfectly respectable. The Muggles will never recognise you as Sirius Black. Better be careful when you get to Hogsmeade, though."

And, clean and neatly dressed in Muggle jeans, shirt and jacket, I did look different, though in fact I felt more like Sirius Black than I had for years.

Remus took a dark blue cloth bag and placed in it the clear bag containing the omelette sandwich, and a few coins.

"Muggle money," he explained. "It'll come in useful. I'm sorry it isn't more, but I don't get paid cash."

"Paid for what?" I asked, confused.

"I work on Mattock's farm," he said. "That's why he lets me live here, and gives me food. He can't pay me money, because it would make complications with tax and something called National Insurance."

"That's what he told you? And you _believe_ him?"

"Well, yes."

"I've been in Azkaban for twelve years, and _I_ don't believe him," I said.

He shrugged. "It doesn't matter. I don't expect to be here much longer anyway. I think Dumbledore will have some work for me soon. He won't pay me money either, but the food will be better. Oh, and I have something else for you."

He handed me a small metal box. I opened it, to discover a tiny purple capsule.

"Poison," he said. "Extremely potent. You don't even have to swallow it, just crushing the capsule in your fingers will do it."

"Why do you want to poison me?"

"It's a last-ditch thing. If you're caught and surrounded by Dementors, and there's no hope……you know they've been ordered to give you the Kiss?"

"Yes, and they nearly did. They would have if Harry hadn't saved me."

"We can't let it happen. Death is better. At least you keep your soul."

I looked at the capsule and it seemed to look enigmatically back at me.

"I don't think I want……" I began.

"Please. Take it. For me. If you died, or went back to Azkaban, it would be terrible, but I could bear it. There would still be hope. But if the Dementors got you, if they destroyed your soul so that you ceased to be, I couldn't live with that knowledge. I would have to die, and even after death I would not escape knowing that you once were, and you will never be again. It would be annihilation for you, and an eternity of Hell for me. Don't let it happen. Take the potion."

Reluctantly I closed the box and put it in my pocket. I would never use it, but I would keep it to please him.

"Where did you get it?" I asked.

"Severus," he said. "I think he thought I intended to take it myself. It must have been a disappointment to him when I didn't."

I took the cloth bag and slung it over my shoulder. "Time to go," I said. "I told Buckbeak I'd be back soon, and it'll take me a few hours to get to him. I don't want him getting worried and coming to look for me."

As we left the hut, Mattock was by the door.

"Mornin', Lupin," he said. "I'd be obliged if you'd take a look at the hen house sometime. Some of the wood at the back is rottin', and we don't want Mr Fox gettin' in there, do we? Or anythin' else," he added, looking at me.

"This is my friend, Mr Lenoir," Remus said. "He's just leaving."

"Any friend of Lupin's is welcome here," said Mattock, still looking at me. "Dog gone, then?"

"Yes. Gone back to his owner," said Remus.

"Right. Well, there's some nice thick planks in the barn that you can use for fixin' the hen house," Mattock said.

"I'll see to it right away," said Remus.

Mattock nodded, and walked away towards the road.

I turned to Remus again. "Well, this is goodbye," I said. I felt as if my heart were breaking, and perhaps my voice revealed it.

He looked down, as if in submission to some tyrannous authority.

"It's all right," he said. "I don't need you. I want you more than I can say, but I can get by without you. Harry needs you."

"I'll come back to you. I promise," I said.

He looked me in the eyes. "Don't promise what you may not be able to do," he said. "Tell me you'll come back if you can."

"I'll come back if I can," I said.

"That's all I need," he replied. "When I knew for certain you were innocent, I was happier than I thought possible. Even if I never see you again, that happiness will stay with me. All the memories of our youth restored, unstained……I could live for the rest of my days on those memories, if I had to."

"Maybe you should anyway," I said soberly. "I am so changed, not what I was, not the boy you fell in love with."

"You are. You're still my beautiful star, and these few hours with you……more than I ever hoped for……the empty years gone as if they had never been."

I moved closer, and put my arms around him. _Now_ I wanted him. I could scarcely believe I had spent the night in bed with him and had not touched him. How could I have wasted that time, that possibly last-ever chance? With my whole being I longed to kiss him, just one good-bye kiss, but I knew that if I did that, it could not end there. I would go back into the hut with him, and I wouldn't come out for days. The hen house would go unrepaired, and Harry – Harry would face whatever was happening at Hogwarts, without my help.

Remus seemed to know it too, because he stepped back from my embrace and said "Go now, while you still can."

And as I stood, hesitant, my arms reaching out to him, he added hoarsely "While I can still let you." He gave me a gentle push and moved out of my reach. His words, his voice, told me he felt as I did, that our separation was tearing open a wound that had just begun to heal. I couldn't trust myself to speak. I turned abruptly and walked away, down the path between the Muggle's fields.

At the end of the hedge I saw Mattock. I wondered how long he had been standing there, and if he had seen our parting. He said nothing, but as I neared him he made an odd gesture with his head, lifting his chin sharply. Some kind of greeting, perhaps? Should I respond with a similar movement of my own head? Better not. For all I knew, it could be an invitation to a duel. I smiled vaguely instead, and that seemed to be all right; at least he made no move to stop me, and I walked on, on to the road that led to the forest where Buckbeak waited.


End file.
